Bio - 199 - Elizabeth Taylor: There Is Nothing Like a Dame

by Darwin Porter

  But Monty much preferred escorting her to seedy dives such as Gregory’s, where he’d taken her so many times before, and which was still his favorite. One drunken night at the tavern, Monty had consumed too many Nembutals and had drunk a quart of Scotch.

  In the men’s toilet, Monty propositioned a drunken sailor, who slugged him viciously, breaking his nose and knocking him to the floor where he stomped on his shoulder, dislocating it. Calling an ambulance, Elizabeth hovered protectively over him and stayed at his apartment until he could look after himself.

  Through the MGM office in New York, she arranged two private screenings of Michael Wilding films, since Monty had never seen him act. He sat impatiently through the double feature.

  At the end of the screenings, he grabbed her arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” Over drinks, he warned her against marrying Wilding. “If he’s not better as a husband than he is as an actor, he’ll be rotten. His acting is very dated, a kind of romantic leading man style left over from one of the English parlor dramas the Brits made in the 1930s.”

  After flying back to Hollywood, Elizabeth spent many evenings with Stewart Granger and his young wife, Jean Simmons, who was sometimes referred to as “the British Elizabeth Taylor.” The British couple, trying to make it in Hollywood, had married in Texas in 1950, with Wilding designated as Granger’s best man.

  As a trio, Granger, Simmons, and Elizabeth drove to the Burbank airport to welcome Wilding to Hollywood. Elizabeth and Wilding were invited to stay in the guest room at the Granger home in the Hollywood Hills.

  For a while during the winter of 1951, Granger, Simmons, Wilding, and Elizabeth lived under the same roof. “I took a child bride,” Granger said, “and now Michael plans to follow my example.”

  In the nights to come, the friendly couples would be seen dining and dancing together at the Mocambo, at Chasen’s, and at Romanoff’s. At the latter, the “watering hole” for Humphrey Bogart, Bogie wet kissed both the bride (Simmons) and the bride-to-be (Elizabeth).

  Even after Simmons had signed with 20th Century Fox and Elizabeth had renewed her contract at MGM, Howard Hughes still had dreams of buying out their contracts. Although he was increasingly resentful of Hughes, Granger invited him over to dinner, a provocative move.

  “Hughes was met by two of the most beautiful girls in the world,” Granger wrote in his memoirs, referring to Elizabeth and to his wife. “His pale blue eyes bugged out of his head, and he literally drooled as he stood looking down at them sitting demurely side by side on a couch. He practically overbalanced himself by trying to look down at their cleavage, both of them being well-endowed in that department. I’d heard a rumor that Hughes was a tit man.”

  “Which one of them would you prefer, Howard?” Granger asked.

  “God damn, I can’t make up my mind,” he replied, watering at the mouth. “Well, hard cheese, old boy,” Granger said. “You’re not going to get either of them, so up yours.”

  “Howard turned and looked at us,” Granger recalled. “We thought we were teasing a nut. But we were teasing a cobra.”

  Columnist Hedda Hopper was outraged when she heard of Elizabeth’s living arrangement, and she summoned her, along with Wilding, to her home in Beverly Hills. During her dialogue, she referred to Granger and Wilding as “two dirty old men taking advantage of those teenagers, the limey bastards.”

  Within her living room, Hopper spoke to Elizabeth as if Wilding were not in the room. “Do you know, my dear child, that Mr. Wilding is a homosexual and has engaged in a decades-long affair with Stewart Granger?”

  Wilding sat in stunned silence, and Elizabeth made no attempt to defend her husband-to-be. He was visibly shaken, knowing that if Hopper printed such charges, his Hollywood career might be over before it had even begun.

  Back in the Hollywood Hills, Wilding told Granger what had happened.

  “Oh, Mikey, don’t worry about what she said,” Elizabeth told him. “It does-n’t matter to me.”

  Granger challenged Elizabeth for not defending Wilding. “You silly bitch, you just sat there and didn’t take up for him? Well, she’ll hear from me.”

  He went into his study and placed a call to Hopper, calling her “a monumental bitch. How dare you accuse a friend of mine of being queer, you raddled, dried-up, frustrated old cunt!”

  Obviously shaken by such a call, Hopper would stick the needle into Granger in any future column where his name came up.

  The following morning at six o’clock, Bogart called Wilding “Have you read Hedda’s column?”

  “Hell, no,” Wilding said. “I’m trying to get some sleep.” But after putting down the phone, he went downstairs and retrieved the morning paper. In it, Hopper had run a picture of Wilding and Granger on a yacht during one of their shared vacations along the French Riviera, clearly suggesting that the two handsome actors “were more than just mere friends.”

  The English Abroad: Stewart Granger with his wife Jean Simmons

  Wilding asked Granger if he’d join them in a joint libel suit against Hopper.

  “Suing Hopper is like suing God,” Granger told him. “remind me the next time we go out on a boat together not to hold your hand.”

  Granger ultimately got his revenge on Hopper by “outing” her actor son, William Hopper, who was a homosexual. Granger spread the word at Hollywood parties. William would later become a household name on television, playing Perry Mason’s assistant, Paul Drake. The star of the show, Raymond Burr, playing Perry Mason, was also gay and in love—for a while at least—with Hopper’s son.

  Louella Parsons encountered Hopper at a party. “What makes you so sure that Wilding is a homo?” she asked.

  “He’s mad for Judy Garland,” Hopper responded. “Have you ever met a homo who’s not mad for Judy Garland?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” Parsons said. “My objection is that Wilding is too old for Liz. As for that homo thing, all Hollywood husbands are queer at some point in their lives. Speaking of that, what is your adorable son doing tonight?”

  At the same party, Elsa Maxwell was asked if she was concerned about Elizabeth marrying a potentially homosexual husband. “My dear, when you travel in international society, you learn that all men, on some rainy night or another, become cocksuckers.”

  A fellow Brit, David Niven, rushed to the defense of Wilding and Granger. “On that Riviera trip in the South of France, they nailed so many coquettes that the population there doubled overnight.” Of course, that was gross, vulgar hyperbole. When Marlene Dietrich read his comment, she said, “Poor David is just covering up his own bisexuality, including his affair with Errol Flynn when they lived together.”

  In her 1962 memoir, The Whole Truth and Nothing But, Hopper restated her charge that Wilding and Granger were homosexual lovers. Reacting quickly, Wilding filed a libel suit, and she settled out of court for $100,000. He also forced her to claim that she had made the charge “in a malicious and wanton fashion with complete disregard for the plaintiff’s feelings.”

  William Hopper (aka Paul Drake in the Perry Mason series)

  The irony of that legal challenge was that Hopper actually had her facts right. “I was forced to pay for telling the truth,” she told friends.

  Elizabeth didn’t need Hopper to tell her that her future husband was bisexual. She already knew it. She had firsthand evidence when she came home early from the studio one afternoon, and heard Wilding and Granger showering together and bragging about which of them was the real top. She went back into the garden for about half an hour before entering the house again, where she found them sitting on a couch with towels wrapped around their midsections.

  The next day, she’d relay the entire episode to Roddy McDowall, who had already warned her to expect such encounters if she married a bisexual with a known reputation for philandering.

  MGM announced the engagement of Elizabeth to Wilding. She told the press, “It’s leap year, and I leaped.”

  To marry Elizabeth and move to
Hollywood meant that Wilding would have to break his twenty-year contract with producer Henry Wilcox. At first, the British producer was furious. He told his wife, Anna Neagle, Wilding’s frequent co-star, “But why sue him? He’s got nothing.”

  Neagle pleaded with her husband “not to stand in the way of Michael’s happiness.” Wilcox did warn Wilding that he would not go over in Hollywood, a prophecy that turned out to be true.

  While Elizabeth was at MGM, Wilding stayed at the Granger home, spending lots of his time reading movie magazines and trying to learn more about Hollywood. Elizabeth’s favorite reading material were articles about herself. On a coffee table at the Granger house rested eighteen magazines with her picture gracing the covers.

  Shortly after his arrival in America, Wilding came across an item that particularly intrigued him. A reporter, David Randolph, asked: “Do you prefer Luscious Liz or Mammillary Marilyn? The race is on to see who will reign as the next sex goddess of Hollywood, following in the footsteps of Jean Harlow, Lana Turner, and Rita Hayworth.”

  Apparently, another star read that same item. One afternoon before Elizabeth returned home from work, Wilding picked up the receiver to hear Marilyn Monroe on the phone.

  “Hello, Mikey, this is Marilyn…you know, Marilyn Monroe. I guess you read what Mr. Randolph wrote in the paper.”

  “Indeed I did, Miss Monroe.”

  “Well, I wanted to let you know that a man like yourself doesn’t have to settle for just strawberry or banana ice cream at Will Wright’s ice cream parlor. You can have a scoop of banana, with a scoop of strawberry on top.”

  “If I read you correctly, I think you’re telling me that I’m not forced to stick exclusively to Elizabeth, but can have Marilyn as a delectable topping.”

  “You read that right, you sexy Brit!” she answered.

  “It’s a cool day, as you know, in Los Angeles, it being autumn and everything. But I bet if you came over this afternoon, you could keep me warm. Elizabeth doesn’t have to know. I’m very discreet.”

  “Miss Monroe, it’s an honor to talk to you, but let me get back to you on that offer,” he said. He couldn’t wait to tell Granger about the invitation he’d received.

  As it happened, the prospect of a roll in the hay with Monroe excited Granger. “Go for it,” he urged Wilding. “I hear the bitch does three-ways. Call her back and ask her if I can come along.”

  Granger later told friends of the offer Monroe had made to Wilding, leaving out the part about his own proposal of a three-way.

  Jeanne Carmen, another blonde goddess and Monroe’s confidante, revealed the outcome of the ménage à trois. Hired for a modeling job by producers Rodgers Brackett and Stanley Mills Haggart, Carmen said, “Marilyn told me that Wilding and Granger had her in the same bed at the same time.”

  The occasion was the night that Howard Hughes threw a party at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where he rented a bungalow. The party was in honor of Elizabeth and Simmons, and he did not invite Granger or Wilding. The two men were “seriously pissed off when our womenfolk wandered into the Hughes lair,” according to Granger.

  The errant actors used that occasion to slip away and see Monroe. As she later told Carmen, “I knew Michael would come over, and I welcomed Stewart too. I thought they were both very handsome, although a bit old. Michael is hung better than Stewart, but neither of them would be turned down in a gay bar.”

  Monroe would enter Wilding’s life on one more occasion, and this incident would be revealed in his memoirs, though he gave a very “limited hangout” in reference to what actually happened between them.

  By now, it was obvious that seducing the husband of her arch rival, Elizabeth, was the most compelling of Marilyn’s motivations.

  Jeanne Carmen A refreshing, outspoken witness to the naughtiness of La-La Land.

  The venue for Hughes’ party was the Beverly Hills Hotel. As part of the game Hughes was playing, he did not show up himself, but sent a surrogate, Pat DiCicco. Stated bluntly, DiCicco was a male hustler selling his services to men or women. He’d been famously married to the heiress Gloria Vanderbilt before she got wise and divorced him.

  DiCicco was assigned by his employer, Hughes, as Elizabeth’s escort. Over glass after glass of champagne, he pitched the glories of his client—that is, Hughes—to Elizabeth. “He could give you anything in the world you want—all the jewelry, all the money,” DiCicco claimed. “He could make you the biggest star in Hollywood.”

  “I’m already the biggest star in Hollywood, with no help from Hughes. I prefer to do it on my own.”

  Still committed to bribing her into marriage, Hughes had never abandoned his pursuit of Elizabeth, having learned that she was seriously strapped for cash “and on the verge of marrying a limey pauper.”

  With the intention of arranging his affairs in England, Wilding left Hollywood on February 17, 1952, with the understanding that Elizabeth would join him there later.

  When the time came for her own transit to London, Elizabeth was startled to have DiCicco booked into the airliner’s seat immediately next to hers, a ploy that had obviously been influenced by Hughes. All across the Atlantic, DiCicco pleaded with her not to marry Wilding, asserting that it was well known that he was a homosexual. “He’s had an ongoing affair with Stewart Granger,” Di-Cicco said. “Now get this: He even had a hot affair with Errol Flynn in England, which Howard knows will continue once he settles into Hollywood. When Wilding doesn’t come home to you, you’ll know where he is—getting fucked by Flynn.”

  After they’d landed in the U.K., while clearing customs with DiCicco, Elizabeth told him, “Tell Mr. Hughes he can dream on and present all the evidence he wants against Michael. I’m still going to marry him. If he also has affairs with Stewart and Errol, then I must compliment his good taste. They are two of the most desirable and sought after men on the planet. I’m sure there are thousands of stars in Hollywood who would jump at Mr. Hughes’ offer. Tell your tomcat boss to chase after one of those pussycats.”

  ***

  Met by Wilding at the airport in London, Elizabeth was put into a taxicab for transport to her suite at the Berkeley Hotel. Another large taxi was rented for her luggage. En route to the hotel, Wilding kissed her passionately.

  Marlene Dietrich was furious after hearing the news of Elizabeth’s upcoming marriage, denouncing her young rival as “an English tart.”

  The forty-eight-year-old Anna Neagle had agreed to be Elizabeth’s maid of honor, with her husband, Henry Wilcox, functioning as Wilding’s best man. Wilcox was still angry at his star for breaking their twenty-year contract, but he generously agreed to pay for their wedding reception at Claridges.

  Neagle helped Elizabeth apply the finishing touches to her wedding dress, which once again had been designed by Helen Rose. This time, it was fashioned in tones of battleship gray instead of “first wedding” white. Her “getaway garb” was a wool suit with a three-tiered organdy collar and cuffs, and she wore a pillbox hat adorned with white flowers.

  From Beverly Hills, Sara and Francis Taylor cabled their regrets, claiming that they would not be able to attend. Sara wrote, “I hope the second time around for you won’t be the disaster your first marriage was.”

  Elizabeth became Mrs. Michael Wilding on February 21, 1952, twenty days after the finalization of her divorce from Nicky Hilton. Some five thousand onlookers gathered outside Claxton Hall in London where the ten-minute ceremony took place. Hundreds of her fans, in mourning because of the recent death of King George VI, wore black armbands. Another woman named Elizabeth had already been designated as the future queen.

  Elizabeth (a.k.a. Mrs. Wilding) was mobbed by crazed fans when she left the hall. One woman ripped off her pillbox hat. Efforts were made to tear off other pieces of her clothing, even locks of her hair. Bobbies literally had to hoist her up in the air to carry her to the waiting limousine that transported her, along with Wilding, Neagle, and Wilcox, to the reception at Claridges.

  Once there, she
told London reporters that “this is the happiest day of my life, repeating the line she’d said when she married Nicky Hilton. To a reporter from the Daily Express, she said that “My career is of little importance. Being a good wife to Michael is my ultimate goal. Most of all, I’m glad to be British once again.”

  That same reporter also noted that “Wilding looked weary and bored—he did not smile once.”

  Because of Britain’s post-war currency restrictions, Wilding was able to take only sixty British pounds out of the U.K. for their honeymoon in the French Alps. That meant that it was up to Elizabeth to pay for their modest eight-day honeymoon.

  A waiter told Paris-Match, “For Miss Taylor’s twentieth birthday, Mr. Wilding put a little candle in a cup of crème caramel and sang ten choruses of ‘Happy Birthday’ to her. There was no cake, but he did order champagne.”

  Back from their honeymoon, Elizabeth and her new husband lived briefly in London at his maisonette at 2 Bruton Street in the exclusive district of Mayfair. In a 1951 issue of Photoplay magazine, he’d already read an article by Sara in which she proclaimed that Elizabeth was virtually helpless around the house. “What Sara didn’t say is that Elizabeth didn’t believe in walking her dog,” Wilding said. “The mutt went anywhere he wanted to. You had to watch where you stepped.”

  Before his departure for Hollywood, Wilding was presented with a bill from Inland Revenue for about £40,000, an amount that converted into around $100,000 worth of 1952 dollars. That was virtually every shilling he had. The bill represented the taxes due on the income he had earned on his previous two pictures.

  He cabled Granger in Hollywood. “I’ll be landing in Hollywood with about twenty dollars in my purse. I’ve got to be supported by a girl who was only a teenager yesterday—or else it’s the soup kitchen for me.”

  On the morning before she was scheduled to depart for London’s airport for a flight headed back to New York, Elizabeth received an envelope slipped under the door of Wilding’s flat. She tore it open. It ominously read: YOU WILL NOT LEAVE LONDON ALIVE UNLESS YOU TURN OVER 50,000 POUNDS TO ME. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.